ROAS is Dead. Long Live CPQ. How to Buy Performance in the OpenAI Era?

For a Performance Marketer, the news about ChatGPT ads is the most important story of the decade. Bigger than Meta Advantage+ and GA4 combined. Why? Because it's the end of targeting as we know it.

The performance marketing world is divided today into two groups: those still trying to fix the Facebook pixel after iOS14, and those who understand that the future is "Direct Intent Buying".

OpenAI has just opened a casino. But the rules are completely different. There is no table marked "Audiences". There is only "Context".

1. Context > Cookies (The Context Supremacy)

Forget remarketing. Forget Lookalike 1%. OpenAI stated clearly: "We do not build user profiles based on their history".

For most agencies, this is a nightmare. "How do I target CEOs?!" – they will ask.

Momentum's answer: You don't target the person. You target the problem.

Instead of chasing a CEO with a cookie across the internet (from LinkedIn to CNN), you wait until they come to ChatGPT with a problem: "How to optimize logistics costs in a 500+ company?".

In that moment, in that nanosecond, their identity doesn't matter. All that matters is that they have a problem you solve. This is the purest form of intent in advertising history.

2. The New Currency: CPQ (Cost Per Query)

CPC (Cost Per Click) is becoming a vanity metric. In a world where AI gives answers, a click is a failure of the interface.

Prepare for CPQ – Cost Per Query (or Cost Per Answer). You will pay for your brand to be part of the solution generated by the model.

• Old Model: User searches -> Clicks ad -> Reads Landing Page -> Converts.
• OpenAI Model: User asks -> AI suggests your product as the solution -> User asks about product details -> Conversion (often without leaving chat).

This cuts the funnel in half. But it also raises the quality bar by 1000%.

3. Supply Shock: Why It Will Be Expensive

Google has 10 spots on the first page + 4 ads on top + 3 on bottom + maps + shopping. This is infinite inventory supply.

ChatGPT has one chat window. The thread is linear. The ad appears "at the bottom of answers".

This means a drastic supply shortage (Supply Shock). Starting prices will be high, and bidding brutal. Only brands with the highest LTV (Lifetime Value) who can afford aggressive bidding, and those with a perfect "Quality Score" (Utility), will win.

4. Hallucination Check as Quality Score

In Google Ads, if your Quality Score is low, you pay more. In OpenAI, if your product doesn't logically fit the answer, you won't show up at all.

AI systems have built-in Guardrails to prevent hallucinations. If the AI decides that recommending your cheap CRM in a conversation about Enterprise solutions is "untrue" or "bad advice" – it will block the ad impression.

Your product must be technically the best to pass this filter.

5. What To Do? The "Zero-Party Data" Strategy

Since we are losing 3rd party cookies, we must become masters of Zero-Party Data. You must design your campaigns and Landing Pages so the user wants to give you data.

• Quizzes, configurators, ROI calculators.
• Content that requires interaction.

Why? Because these interactions build "Context" that AI understands. If a user spends 5 minutes in your calculator, that is a signal to the model: "This is a useful tool".

Verdict:

The time of "Marketing Engineers" is coming. The era of "gut feeling" campaigns is over. Either you understand intent vectors and AI attention economics, or you will be left with expensive, empty traffic from the Display Network.

At Momentum, we are already testing these scenarios. We are ready for CPQ.